The magical idea of playing with beautiful luminous game balls at night has intrigued and challenged inventive minds since at least 1929, and probably earlier. Many reasons for this are apparent such as the night time aesthetic appeal of a brightly colored translucent object like a full moon, the excitement of games in the dark, the irritation perhaps remembered from childhood of having to stop various ball games due to darkness, and the inability to see adequately or to find lost balls in the shadows. Also there is the desire to produce a fresh, new, different, pleasurable and exciting night game and product for the public's pleasure, and the inventor's satisfaction and profit.
Numerous playballs with various types of lights inside, a few of which were inflated, have been patented over the years; however, as eloquently stated in 1977 by Nelson Newcomb, undoubtedly one of the more serious illuminated playball inventors, "as far as we are aware none of the devices of the prior art have been commercially marketed because of expensive, complicated constructions and the inability of the lighting structures mounted within to withstand for long the rough handling and high acceleration and deceleration to which balls are subjected when they are thrown, caught, kicked, or bounced on the ground."
To our knowledge, except for a small chemical wiffle ball with a patent pending, nothing has changed much since then.